Tougher Market To Reach Epcot Success Won't Be Easy To Duplicate

October 27, 1986|By Vicki Vaughan of The Sentinel Staff

Those who own the restaurants at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center where chosen for their experience and expertise, and that has paid off handsomely for Disney. Epcot's restaurants are widely regarded as part of the attraction there.

Lois Kostroski, executive director of the Florida Restaurant Association, said that launching a successful restaurant in Orlando or elsewhere in Central Florida will be a more difficult proposition than running an Epcot restaurant. ''The local market in Orlando is quite different from Disney's,'' Kostroski said. ''It will be harder -- perhaps much harder -- to be a success in Orlando because of that dependence on the local market,'' she said.

Figures that would indicate how many new restaurants survive Central Florida's competitive marketplace aren't available, but statewide figures are daunting.

Statewide, about 70 percent of all new restaurants that open fail, according to figures compiled by the Florida Division of Hotels and Restaurants.

Last year in Florida, 4,779 new restaurants were launched while 3,677 went out of business, said hotel and restaurant division director Hugh Snow. The division's figures don't indicate whether the new restaurants are the ones that failed, but Kostroski said that most new restaurants fail in the first year.

But the Epcot restaurateurs starting new ventures said that they can make it.

Rachid Choufani said that running the Marrakesh Morroccan Restaurant at Epcot ''has been an incredible challenge.'' The high volume -- serving about 1,000 guests a day -- was difficult at first.

But having mastered that, Choufani said he and his partner Rachid Lyazidi will do well outside Disney.